Peace - Better than I am today

I have written a couple of post that I lost interest in before I posted them.  I wonder sometimes whether writing here is really what I should be doing anymore.  Whether my words are of any interest to anyone since sometimes they don't even interest me.

I began writing here at a time in my life that was so low that I could barely function.  I had lost everything that I thought was important to me.  I had lost even my core self or so I thought.  It was a time when there was no one to lean on and all the fixes of the past didn't work.

There were times when I didn't think I could go on even one more day.  My mind and body were working against me and I was convinced that I would feel like I did forever. Eight years does seem like forever when you believe you will never feel happy again.

I believe now that the stress of being left again together with the recession and some symptoms of menopause over taxed my body and produced the perfect storm in my brain.  My judgment wasn't good and I faced the situation alone and didn't seek medical advice. I didn't know that the prolong state of crisis that I was in along with the lack of care for myself  was affecting my thinking.

I have spent my whole life thinking I was in control and that I could manage whatever came my way. I had to believe this to survive I learned early that you just have to push on no matter what. My first experience with this was the death of my mother. I taught myself how to deal with the unknown by staying busy doing something every minute to avoid the feelings.

This was my method and it worked pretty well until my husband left.  He was really the only person I let in my world even to this day. We had the same brokenness his mother had also died at eleven too and his father drank to avoid the pain. He had been alone too and we connected in a way that was not healthy but felt safe. When he moved on I withdrew back into my task mode and kept going.

I found Al-Anon and it changed my life.  It helped me first to simplify my thoughts and to focus on the moment.  The slogans "first things first" - "keep it simple" and 'one day at a time" kept me going. I went to meetings everyday and I found people like me.  People who thought too much and felt responsible for everything.

Until then it never occurred to me that my thoughts were hurting me or that my thinking was developed by my own child's mind. Every solution I found including the program was just and extension of my need to control what was happening to me.  It was more of the same feeling I was responsible for every right and wrong thing that happened to me.

Where this long emotional road has brought me is to a final resting place. A place of peace only after realizing their is no solution.  Once I was able to remove all the layers of thoughts the child in me had created to survive I was free. At first I was terrified because I felt so empty without the constant dreaming and scheming going on in my head.

I realized I had to stop searching for the secret to life and happiness.  The warm fussy blanket of protection that would keep bad things from happening to me.  The energy that I spent doing this wasting the actual time I had to be happy.  Nothing bad is happening in this moment and so I can just be happy.  My mind is totally bored with this idea because there is nothing for it to do.

The way I thought was a habit and a way to entertain myself when life was out of control. I had to let it all go to find what I really wanted which was peace. Peace that is available every moment if I choose to acknowledge it.

It has been a long journey to find myself and forgive myself.  I learned a lot and had to un-learn a lot too.  I feel gratefull today not to be trapped by the constant need to be better than I am today.

Fathers - Healing

On the subject of  Father's Day. I loved my father and he loved me. I waited a lifetime for him to reach out to me and make me feel like I deserved to be loved, but it never happened. All of my relationships have been affected by the idea that my father didn't love me.  I felt that if I wasn't enough for him then I would never be enough for anyone.

I wasn't worth him taking the time to pursue me ever. After I left home at 16 he let me go and never looked back. Ironically I can be just like that too. I don't pursue but I wait until I am let go and I never look back.

This was just who my father was and it wasn't directed just towards me.  In recovery I got the courage to ask him why he let me go he said "every body's got to do what they got to do."  I knew at that moment that it wasn't about me.  I really wanted it to be.

It really felt worse because I knew I would never get the hole in my heart filled by the man sitting in front of me. I thought I would be forever broken  I thought he was the only hope I had for feeling normal.

It took another two decades (sorry) to get past that moment today I finally know it was this belief that I was broken that actually held me back. I thought had to accept the idea that nothing could be done about my brokenness and learn to live with it.

This was a big lie I told myself and I had plenty of other people telling me I had a perfect right to feel broken and hurt.  My friends and I were all the same it felt good to find others like me and this became my life's focus trying to make the best of my brokenness. Finding ways to find happiness despite the past.

I had to realize that dwelling on what I thought was missing made me miss the life I was actually living.  I was never 100% there because I was always trying to solve the problem of myself and what I was missing. Living with alcoholism helped because it gave me relief from the problem of me and put it on the problem of someone else.

I thought the best I could hope for was to deal with my feelings of the past.  Now I know I can choose to just think of my past as novel I finished reading yesterday. It is done it can't affect me today unless I want let it.  If I give in it might be because I enjoy identifying with the pain and suffering of the past. To me this was a habit I had done so long it was as natural as breathing. I see it now how stuck I was in my thinking.

When I go out in the world today I can be who I choose to be and if I want I can choose not to be that broken person in my head. Sometimes if I am with those that knew me before it is more difficult because they have their story of me and it hard for them to accept that I have changed. They may be holding tightly to their own story and it makes them uncomfortable that I have moved on.

I have lost some people in my life and I have given up others. I just don't fit with those living in the past or those that need someone to take care of.  I am no longer any one's project.

I am grateful for my past today but I am not going to live there. I am also grateful for my father who although he wasn't an emotional giant he did love me and said so even if i didn't believe him. He did give me the ability to fix all kinds of things and a curious mind.

I do agree with one thing my father said "every body's got to do what they got to do."